Overseas Territories Regional Risk Reduction Initiative (R3i)

Introduction

R3I covers the English and Dutch overseas countries and territories in the region, a total of 11 territories (Anguilla, Aruba, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos, and the Netherlands Antilles (Bonaire, Curaçao, St Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius)). These islands are highly vulnerable to various natural hazards and climate change impacts, also having fragile ecosystems and concentrations of settlements and major functions in low lying coastal areas and other hazard prone locations. This project seeks to address the risk and exposure of these small islands by providing a network of regional infrastructure, programmes, policies and protocols to strengthen their capacity to predict and prepare for natural hazards, thus improve resilience and reduce risk and subsequent loss.

Incorporated into the R3I Programme, is the increased capacity in hazard mapping and associated vulnerability assessments, to further be incorporated into spatial information systems to inform planning and development processes.

Additionally, plans for a regional early warning systems (EWS) pilot for the OCTs have been put in place, based on the ITU automated alert protocol for warnings.

Finally, we recognize that capacity built in response, rescue and recovery is essential, in order to shorten recovery periods through the use risk assessment and mitigation practices for development planning.

Our Accomplishments

At the knowledge and results sharing workshop in Cayman Islands in May 2012, disaster managers and territorial officers confirmed the realization of project deliverables and expressed their strong satisfaction that the R3I enabled cooperation and sharing of experiences and expertise, which was critical to their disaster risk reduction efforts, but not possible prior to the project. They also called for extending the capacity development support, building on progress made and applying the lessons learned in pilot activities.

Storm surge and tsunami models developed in BVI and Sint Maarten will also serve as examples for other OCTS to develop their own coastal hazard maps.

4 pilot countries have been equipped with advanced and automated multi-hazard and multi-lingual warning systems capable of alerting the entire population of imminent threats.

The system, based on the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is set up as a network capable of activating multiple alerting tools (sirens, email, SMS, radio broadcast, etc) in each country and from each country. These countries can issue timely alerts within a few seconds, even in case of tsunami.